Socioeconomic Determinants of Fertility Behavior in Developing Nations: Theory and Initial Results

摘要

This comparative study presents the initial theoretical and empirical results of the Michigan Comparative Fertility Project which is devoted to comparative research on reproductive behavior. The report has two chapters. Chapter 1 develops a microlevel specification that distinguishes three components of the fertility process. These components lead to a block-recursive structural equations model. The comparative aspect of this research models variability in the micro relationships across societies. Chapter 2 presents highly tentative and preliminary empirical results for a subset of the micro-equation system developed in Chapter 1.